After Santa Cruz’s Mile Buoy Is Saved, Coast Guard Eyes Other Safe Water Buoys for Removal

Citing emerging navigation technology and the cost of maintenance, the United States Coast Guard is “evaluating the need for all Safe Water Buoys along the California coast.” Many of our readers have been aware of these plans, but the issue was thrust into the spotlight during the brief but passionate debate over the proposed removal of Santa Cruz’s Mile Buoy — an idea that was quickly rejected after mariners spoke out.

The proposed removals have been met with skepticism by a state boater advocacy group. In a letter to the Coast Guard, Recreational Boaters of California, or RBOC, “urgently requests that the Guard reconsider this planned mass removal of tangible aids to navigation. Literally every boater, sail racing group, and day sailor we’ve had the chance to consult so far, since your bulletin last month, thinks it’s a bad idea — if not actively dangerous.”

“The US Coast Guard will be removing the following Safe Water Buoys and will be replacing them with Virtual AIS (V-AIS) Aids to Navigation,” the CG said in a bulletin.

LLNR 455 – Noyo Approach Lighted Whistle Buoy NA

LLNR 2435 – Newport Harbor Entrance Lighted Bell Buoy NWP

LLNR 3010 – Long Beach Channel Approach Lighted Whistle Buoy LB

LLNR 3840 – Morro Bay Approach Lighted Whistle Buoy MB

LLNR 490 – Humboldt Bay Entrance Lighted Whistle Buoy HB

LLNR 10 – San Diego Bay Approach Lighted Whistle Buoy SD

“Separately, bells and gongs are being removed from some buoys,” the CG said. “The Coast Guard is permanently discontinuing the sound signal on the following Aids to Navigation:

Alameda Naval Air Station Channel Entrance Lighted Bell Buoy 1 (LLNR 4745)

Alcatraz Lighted Bell Buoy AZ (LLNR 4310)

Pillar Point Harbor Entrance Lighted Bell Buoy 3 (LLNR 4140)

San Francisco Main Ship Channel Lighted Bell Buoy 7 (LLNR 4190)

Pillar Point Harbor Entrance Lighted Gong Buoy 1 (LLNR 4130)

In an email to Latitude 38, the Coast Guard said that they’re taking into account (but are not limited to) the following factors when considering removing buoys:

• The Aid to Navigation’s effect on safe navigation
  • Does it provide sufficient and timely information with which to safely navigate vessels within and through a waterway?
• Cost of maintaining aid
• Vessel traffic density and type
• Existing geographic composition
• Weather conditions
• Search and rescue historical data
• Frequency of discrepancies in the aid
• Ability for other means to provide equivalent value to mariners
• Environmental concerns

In their letter to the Coast Guard, the RBOC said, “A belief that all craft today have modern electronic-only navigational systems, and can always steer into port on GPS, would be naïve at best. Surely your own inspection data tells you that the recreational fleet is not all new, and is not all kitted out electronically as well as commercial craft.

“In California’s coastal waters, there’s often no absolute division between open-ocean waters, inlets, a small calm coastal bay, much larger bays with their own swells, and so on. Like it or not, we have lots of citizens and tourists running craft, even ill-fitted ones, inside and outside harbor entrances — and they’re not all going to have GPS or show up on AIS.”

RBOC president James Clark referenced a sea trial off Ventura a few years ago where a small cabin cruiser’s electronic harness partially failed. “What brought my wife and [me] safely back into harbor was our charted course plot, depth readings, and importantly, the Ventura Harbor whistle buoy, which we could hear [but] not see. It’s gratitude for our survival, not nostalgia, that moves me to suggest that you should not silence all the whistles and remove all the marker buoy lights in most of our recreational harbors statewide.”

Among their many duties, the Coast Guard is responsible for maintaining a nationwide network of maritime navigational aids. “These aids to navigation, or ATONs, include about 50,000 lighthouses, beacons and buoys marking more than 25,000 miles of navigable channels and 95,000 miles of shoreline in the United States and its territories,” the Department of Defense wrote in 2019. “Some of these aids are brand-new, while others — like the Alcatraz Light in San Francisco Bay — are more than 100 years old.”

Referring to the Safe Water Buoys, the CG said in the email to Latitude that, “The Coast Guard Aids to Navigation unit services these buoys tri-annually for regular maintenance (ranging from $30k-$600k/visit depending on location) and every seven years for complete replacement of the buoy ($110k – $1.3M/visit). [These are] rough estimates for 2024 costs; pricing for parts/fuel subject to increase with inflation. The units also conduct irregular servicing for discrepancy response (buoy off-station or the light extinguished, etc.) on as-needed basis.”

Maintaining ATONS and general marine transportation system management is yet another task heaped onto the Coast Guard’s punch list. In addition to rescuing mariners, the Coast Guard is also responsible for coastal defense and maritime law enforcement, homeland security, natural disaster response and drug enforcement on the high seas. (We’re probably missing a few.)

Depending on whom you ask, various administrations — on both the left and right — have hacked away at or snubbed the Coast Guard budget over the years. Regardless, we are clearly at a crossroads of technology, budgets and priorities.